Tabletop interaction: research alert

At the t2i Lab we focus on tangible user interfaces (TUIs) to advance and improve the user experience in computer supported learning and problem solving. By directly interacting with physical controls, complex concepts such as the chemistry of a molecule, dynamics of physics, or the rules of a market may be more easily understood. Through their capacity to closely track user actions TUIs may offer more direct interaction. Several disciplines are involved in tabletop interaction, such as gesture-based interaction, social protocols, haptic rendering, tracking-, and display-hardware. This demo paper presents the two projects Augmented Chemistry (AC) and eMotion. AC is a combination of TUIs and computer graphics for organic chemistry education with a focus on concepts like the octet rule and tetrahedrons. eMotion focuses on bridging the gap between computers and human emotions by enabling computers to estimate their users' emotions by evaluating their mouse motions.